1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an article storage facility provided with an article storage rack in which a plurality of article storage units for storing an article is provided so as to be aligned in a horizontal direction and a vertical direction, and an article transporter capable of moving along a path via an article transfer location with respect to the article storage rack, wherein an article loader for bringing articles into and taking articles out of the article storage rack is provided to the article storage rack so as to be able to project and retract between a protruding position for article transfer that projects to the outside of the article storage rack, and a retracted position for retracting in the direction of the article storage rack, and wherein an article is delivered or received by the article loader in the protruding position in a state in which the article transporter is stopped at the article transfer location.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the article storage facility, the article loader is provided so as to be able to project and retract between the protruding position and the retracted position; when an article is not being brought in or taken out, the article loader is retracted to the retracted position, the article transporter is stopped in the article transfer location in order to bring in or take out an article with respect to the article storage rack; and when an article is delivered and received by the article loader, the article loader projects to the protruding position so as to allow the article to be delivered and received by the article transporter.
The article storage rack is provided with protrusion and retraction operating means for operating the protrusion and retraction of the article loader between the protruding position and the retracted position (for example, see WO2004/034438, or the corresponding JP 2006-515256).
The article loader is provided so as to be able to project and retract between the protruding position for projecting to the outside of the article storage rack, and the retracted position for retraction to the inside of the article storage rack, and an article can be moved to the inside and the outside of the article storage rack. Therefore, the space in which the article loader projects can be effectively utilized by causing the article loader to retract to a retracted state, and when the article storage rack or the article transporter is positioned in a downflow-type clean space, an air current downflow can be prevented from being disturbed by the article loader that projects from the article storage rack by causing the article loader to retract to the retracted state in advance.
However, the article loader provided to the article storage rack is not limited to a single unit, and numerous article loaders are sometimes provided, and the article storage rack provided to the article loader is also not limited to a single unit, and numerous article storage racks are sometimes provided along the path of the article transporter. Therefore, when the protrusion and retraction operating means for operating the protrusion and retraction of the article loader is provided to the article storage rack as in the conventional article storage facility described above, the protrusion and retraction operating means is provided to each of the numerous article loaders when numerous article loaders are provided. Therefore, the structure of the article storage rack become complex, and there is a risk of increased complexity of the structure of the article storage facility as a whole.